The mission parameters have evolved beyond their original scope. What began as a straightforward contract, providing security escort and romantic cover for one wedding event, duration approximately six hours, minimal threat level anticipated, has transformed into something my standard operational framework was never designed to accommodate.
This is no longer about successfully navigating a wedding reception without casualties or social catastrophes. This is no longer about maintaining the illusion of engagement until we can extract from the venue and return to our separate lives. This is no longer about completing a bizarre Craigslist assignmentthat I accepted because the tactical challenge interested me and because something about her rambling, three-margaritas-deep message made mecuriousin ways I didn't fully understand.
This is about keeping her.
Permanently.
Claiming her completely, in every way that my instincts demand and my increasingly possessive nature requires. Making her understand that what started as performance has become the most authentic thing in my carefully controlled existence.
And I always,alwayscomplete my missions.
CHAPTER 13
COLLETTA
Ibarely register the vows.
Monica's voice breaks onfor better or worse, and our mother dabs at her eyes with a monogrammed handkerchief, and the string quartet swells into something achingly romantic that probably cost more than my car payment. The officiant says something about love being a journey, about two souls becoming one, about commitment and honor and forever.
But I can't stop looking at him.
Kruk sits in the back row, shoulders too broad for the delicate vineyard chair, hands folded in his lap like he's waiting for a signal to deploy. The late afternoon light cuts through the ceremony tent and catches on the gold caps of his tusks, on the harsh angles of his face, on the tribal ink that crawls up his neck and disappears into his collar. He's supposed to blend into the background, to be forgettable decoration for this pastel tableau.
He fails spectacularly.
Three elderly aunts keep glancing back at him with expressions that cycle between terror and fascination. A cousin's boyfriend shifts uncomfortably every time Kruk's gaze sweeps the perimeter. Even the flower girl gave him a wide berth duringher walk down the aisle, scattering petals in an arc that carefully avoided his general vicinity.
But when he looks at me, when those dark eyes find mine across the rows of chairs and champagne-tipsy guests and elaborate floral arrangements, everything else dissolves into irrelevant background noise.
The muscle in his jaw flexes. His version of a smile, I'm learning. The subtle tells that translate his stoic warrior exterior into something approaching human emotion. A language I'm becoming fluent in despite never intending to enroll in the course.
Heat crawls up my neck and settles in my cheeks. I duck my head, pretending intense interest in Monica's dress train, fighting the completely inappropriate grin that wants to split my face open in the middle of my sister's wedding ceremony.
This is absolutely, categorically not the moment to be having these kinds of thoughts.
This is spectacularly, overwhelmingly not the appropriate place for my brain to be wandering in this particular direction.
This is absolutely, categorically not the moment to be mentally replaying last night's activities in graphic detail while standing three feet from a priest and clutching a bouquet of peonies.
My body doesn't care about appropriate timing.
I can still feel him, the controlled power in those hands when they pinned my wrists to the mattress, the scrape of his tusks against the sensitive skin of my throat. The way he called me in a voice like gravel and possession and something deeper than I had vocabulary to name.
"You may kiss the bride."
The words return me to the present. Monica and her new husband lock lips to enthusiastic applause. I clap automatically, a bouquet tucked into the crook of my elbow, a smile plasteredacross my face in what I hope passes for sisterly joy rather than post-orgasmic distraction.
We process back down the aisle. The other bridesmaids giggle and wave to various groomsmen and guests. I keep my eyes forward, spine straight, trying to project the composed dignity that Monica specifically requested in her fourteen-page Maid of Honor instruction packet.
I make it approximately seven steps before I glance toward the back row again.
Kruk watches me with the focused intensity of a predator tracking prey. Not the dangerous predator, the kind that wants to eat you in the bad way. The other kind. My pulse stutters and my thighs clench and my brain shut down all higher cognitive functions in favor of base biological responses.
An elderly woman next to him makes a disapproving sound, shifting away slightly.
I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper, fighting back the giggle that bubbles up from my chest. The nervous laugh. The completely inappropriate response that's gotten me in trouble at funerals and job interviews and every serious moment I've ever attempted to navigate with something resembling adult composure.
Not now. Not in front of two hundred wedding guests and my mother and the priest who already looks vaguely concerned about the giant orc in the back row wearing what appears to be a tuxedo printed on a t-shirt.
